14. McClure, Michael. GRAHHR SHEET(San Francisco): privately printed, (1963)
First edition, broadside, 6.25″ x 2″. According to Clements, copies were given away by the author as tickets at readings in San Francisco and at the University of California at Berkeley.
(Clements A11)
[not in archive]

16. McClure, Michael. POERTRY IS A MUSCULAR PRINCIPLE(Los Angeles): privately printed, 1964
First edition, broadside, 8.5″ x 5.5″. Announces a reading by McClure. Photograph of McClure by Wallace Berman; make up by Robert LaVigne. Beneath the photo is a statement by McClure beginning “Poetry is a muscular principle…”
(Clements A13)

37. McClure, Michael. HAIL THEE WHO PLAY
Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, August 1968
— A. First edition, perfect-bound printed wrappers, 233 numbered and signed copies.
— B. First edition, hardcover, 75 numbered and signed copies, each with an original drawing by the author.

51. McClure, Michael. TO JAMES B. RECTOR
San Francisco: Privately Published, 1969
First edition, broadside,
A. trade edition, total number published unknown.
B. 30 copies numbered and signed by the author.

52. McClure, Michael. LIBERATION
Oakland: Mills College Tape Music Center, 1969
First edition, broadside, issued in a large bag labeled “Free,” along with 8 broadsides by other contributors.

David Meltzer was born in Rochester, New York, and raised in Brooklyn. He began his literary career during the San Francisco Beat and Berkeley Renaissance period in California, and his work was included in the anthology, The New American Poetry 1945-1960. At the age of 20 he recorded his poetry with jazz musicians in Los Angeles and also became a singer-songwriter and guitarist for several bands during the 1960s, including The Serpent Power. He is the author of over 40 volumes of poetry, and has also published fiction and essays, and has edited numerous anthologies and collections of interviews.

Meltzer taught in the humanities and poetics programs at the New College of California in San Francisco for 30 years. In 2008, he received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. He was also given the Bay Area Guardian’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2012 was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry.

Diane di Prima has said, “David Meltzer is a hidden adept, one of the secret treasures on our planet. Great poet, musician, comic; mystic unsurpassed, performer with few peers.”

A. Books and Broadsides

1. Meltzer, David. POEMS
San Francisco: Donald & Alice Shenker, [1957]
First edition, side-stapled sheets in printed wrappers with library tape binding, 25 copies, offprint of David Meltzer / Donald Shenker book comprising only the Meltzer section and with a variant cover omitting Shenker’s name and a revised colophon.

From Krumhansl, “201 copies were published 16 June 1960, 50 of which were distributed to various poets and friends of E.V. Griffith, publisher of Hearse Press. 150 copies were included in Coffin 1 and the remaining copy was used for the offset pasteup of Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail.”

111 copies were published 7 April 1967, of which 99 were signed, the remaining 12 copies are unsigned, numbered 1-12, and marked “Review Copy” in holograph red ink.

From the colophon: “Printed April, 1967 in Los Angeles by Philip Klein for the Black Sparrow Press. This edition is limited to ninety-nine copies; three copies lettered a, b and c, which are not for sale, and ninety-six numbered copies, for sale, all signed by the poet.”

From the colophon: “Designed and printed September, 1967 in San Francisco by Graham Mackintosh for the Black Sparrow Press. The edition is limited to one hundred and twenty five copies; three copies lettered a, b, c which are not for sale and one hundred and twenty two numbered copies, for sale, all signed by the poet.”

a,b. First edition, perfect-bound in printed wrappers, 6″ x 8.5″, 89 pages, 747 copies
Note: Front cover of this edition was misprinted “Sreet” for “Street”. According to John Martin 18 copies exist thus, without the white label which was affixed to the second state (pictured).

letterpress printed, introductory note by Bukowski, dedicated to John Thomas, John Martin, and John the Baptist, edited by John Martin, printed prospectus issued. (Dorbin A11, Krumhansl 27)

From the colophon: “Designed and printed April, 1968 in San Francisco by Graham Mackintosh for the Black Sparrow Press. The edition is limited to 800 copies in wrappers and 75 hardbound, signed copies each with an original illustration by the poet.”

From the colophon: “Design by Barbara Martin. Printed by Noel Young. Published as a New Year’s Greeting to the friends of the Black Sparrow Press in an edition of 400 copies, 100 of which are numbered and signed by the author.”

Note: 350 unsigned copies issued, not 300 as stated in the colophon.

23. THE DAYS RUN AWAY LIKE WILD HORSES OVER THE HILLS
Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1969

From the colophon: “Printed December 1969 in Santa Barbara by Noel Young for the Black Sparrow Press. Design by Barbara Martin. This edition is limited to 1250 copies in paper wrappers; 250 hardcover copies numbered & signed by the poet; & 50 numbered copies handbound in boards by Earle Gray, signed & with an original illustration by the poet.”

Henry Charles Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-born American poet, novelist, and short story writer.

His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambiance of his home city of Los Angeles. His work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, in the LA underground newspaper Open City. Bukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the early 1940s and continuing on through the early 1990s.

Regarding Bukowski’s enduring popular appeal, Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, “the secret of Bukowski’s appeal. . . [is that] he combines the confessional poet’s promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero.”

When Bukowski was 24, his short story “Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip” was published in Story magazine. Two years later, another short story, “20 Tanks from Kasseldown”, was published by the Black Sun Press in Issue III of Portfolio: An Intercontinental Quarterly, a limited-run, loose-leaf broadside collection printed in 1946 and edited by Caresse Crosby. Failing to break into the literary world, Bukowski grew disillusioned with the publication process and quit writing for almost a decade, a time that he referred to as a “ten-year drunk”. These “lost years” formed the basis for his later semi-autobiographical chronicles, although they are fictionalized versions of Bukowski’s life through his highly stylized alter-ego, Henry Chinaski.

During part of this period he continued living in Los Angeles, working at a pickle factory for a short time but also spending some time roaming about the United States, working sporadically and staying in cheap rooming houses. In the early 1950s, Bukowski took a job as a fill-in letter carrier with the U.S. Postal Service in Los Angeles but resigned just before he reached three years’ service.

By 1960, Bukowski had returned to the post office in Los Angeles where he began work as a letter filing clerk, a position he held for more than a decade.

Jon and Louise Webb, now recognized as giants of the post-war ‘small-press movement’, published The Outsider literary magazine and featured some of Bukowski’s poetry. Under the Loujon Press imprint, they published Bukowski’s It Catches My Heart in Its Hands in 1963 and Crucifix in a Deathhand in 1965.

Beginning in 1967, Bukowski wrote the column “Notes of a Dirty Old Man” for Los Angeles’ Open City, an underground newspaper. When Open City was shut down in 1969, the column was picked up by the Los Angeles Free Press as well as the hippie underground paper NOLA Express in New Orleans. In 1969 Bukowski and Neeli Cherkovski launched their own short-lived mimeographed literary magazine, Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. They produced 3 issues over the next 2 years.

In 1969 Bukowski accepted an offer from Black Sparrow Press publisher John Martin and quit his post office job to dedicate himself to full-time writing. He was then 49 years old. As he explained in a letter at the time, “I have one of two choices – stay in the post office and go crazy … or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve.” Less than one month after leaving the postal service he finished his first novel, Post Office. As a measure of respect for Martin’s financial support and faith in a relatively unknown writer, Bukowski published almost all of his subsequent major works with Black Sparrow Press. An avid supporter of small independent presses, he continued to submit poems and short stories to innumerable small publications throughout his career.

Bukowski died of leukemia on March 9, 1994, in San Pedro, aged 73, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.